Final Destination: how a rise in real-life freak accidents is making the horror franchise scarier than ever

A golden rule of horror is that there must be a fiend or a foe. A gross mutant; a bloodthirsty vampire; a demented ghost; a psycho killer. It needs to be something we can actually see (through the slits of our fingers) and fear for days, or years, to come. Something to infiltrate our dreams like those poor residents of Elm Street. Something really, truly terrifying. It’s these somethings that tend to sell tickets – relative to how much cornea-popping, popcorn-chucking trauma they cause.

Then 25 years ago this month, Final Destination broke the rule. The iconic Noughties horror franchise doesn’t feature a single tangible monster, either supernatural or human. There’s only Death. Each of the five films follows a group of teens, one of whom has a premonition of an imminent freak accident that comes true. The survivors soon realise that they have defied destiny and no matter what they do, they will meet their demise in the most bizarrely brutal ways possible: car crashes, rollercoaster malfunctions, plane explosions and the kind of workplace accidents that would get Injury Lawyers 4U? spamming your voicemail. Crucially, though, we never see Death. It’s just there… it’s everywhere.

And Final Destination, a quarter of a century on, is freakier than ever. Look away, those with a nervous disposition: according to a Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents report from November 2024, freak deaths are 42 per cent higher than two decades ago, becoming the second biggest killer for under-forties. More time spent indoors has proved fatal; over 55 per cent of preventable deaths now happen at home. Poisonings are up by 96 per cent in the past decade; exposure to inanimate mechanical forces (like, being crushed by machinery) are up by 23 per cent and fatal contact with animate forces (like, say, being charged by a cow) is up by 66 per cent. Whether it’s down to more DIY, an increasingly blasé attitude to danger or – most likely – being superglued to our phones, there’s a genuine epidemic of bizarre deaths.

Jeffrey Reddick, the creator of the classic franchise, isn’t shocked by the stats. “I've been nearly hit so many times by someone who is turning when they're not supposed to be, they’ve got their phone covering their view. It's crazy.” He’s even noticed the potential scene unfolding out his window. “There’s construction everywhere outside my flat. And I'm just like, I hope nothing happens. But if it does, I already told Craig [Perry, producer], you guys can milk it for marketing,” he laughs.

It makes for creepily prescient timing: a new movie is on the way after a 14-year hiatus, with Final Destination: Bloodlines set for release in May. The trailer is a statement in and of itself: all it shows is a tattoo artist accidentally hanging himself after a chain hooks onto his septum piercing (our dads were right!) once again killed by invisible Death. But back in the late Nineties, the lack of any tangible enemy made it tricky for Reddick to get his idea off the ground. His flash of inspiration came after reading an article about a woman who had changed her flights after her mum had a vision of it crashing (scarily, Reddick read this story while he himself was on a plane). The mother was, somehow, right. It got his mind whirring. “I had this thought of: what if she had cheated death? I thought that was a really cool idea.”

Originally writing it as a spec script for The X Files – “the hottest show on TV” at the time – one of Reddick’s colleagues at New Line Cinema said it would make a great full feature film. With Perry and Warren Zide – both producers on American Pie – joining the team, they honed Reddick’s vision. The adults, for example, were changed to more splatter-friendly teens. “I just wanted to get this made,” Reddick laughs. “I’ll kill old people. I don't care.” But New Line still had concerns and were worried it would be all filler, no killer – literally. “They said there’s nothing you can see or fight. They didn’t understand it.” Forced to throw something in, Reddick added an Angel of Death character that would taunt the teens.

Call it fate, but Glen Morgan and James Wong – both writers on The X Files – were then invited to join the team. Reddick had originally envisioned the characters committing suicide after suffering from survivors’ guilt, but Morgan and Wong crucially changed it to Death getting its revenge. The new duo also bravely killed off the Angel and fought to make sure that Death wasn’t shown at all – beyond the occasional shadowy presence. The result was Final Destination, released on 16 March 2000. The film follows a group of college students who narrowly miss a plane crash and are then bizarrely butchered through a horrific chain reaction. Critics were savage (“A silly slasher movie, minus the slasher,” quipped the New York Post) but that didn’t stop it from pulling in $112.9m off a $23m budget. Four other lucrative films followed over the next 11 years; Reddick only worked directly on the first two, but is still close to the team to keep his original vision intact.

The new instalment is being directed by duo Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein (Freaks) who got the job after a Zoom audition with Warner Bros. During the video call, Lipovsky and Stein’s office suddenly went up in flames and the ceiling fan came crashing down, decapitating them both. Thankfully, it was all pre-recorded SFX. The stunt landed them the honour of directing one of horror’s most storied franchises.

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Aside from Death, the only constant presence in Final Destination has been horror legend and Candyman star Tony Todd. In the franchise, he plays funeral homeowner William Bludworth, acting as a sort of conduit to Death and explaining to the teens how it enacts revenge after being cheated. Sadly, Todd died in November; this new film will be his last ever on-screen appearance. “It’s devastating that we lost him. He’s such a wonderful man and a dear friend and this is a good tribute to him,” Reddick says.

For some schlocky horror film from over 20 years ago, Final Destination has incredible staying power. Reddick even often overhears people using “final destination” to describe bizarre incidents. But why? Well, the lack of monster is definitely what makes it so unique. The concept has undoubtedly spawned more recent films featuring similarly strange, intangible forces as in the cult classic It Follows and popcorn fare like Smile. But even these films can’t resist making their “entities” manifest in some way or another. Final Destination doesn’t succumb to this urge – and somehow that makes Death even scarier.

And Death does like to live up to its name; the kill scenes in Final Destination are legendary (no wonder Collider ranked all 41 of them). They trigger a morbid fascination within us: characters are impaled, beheaded, chopped, sliced, cauterised and kebabbed for our twisted enjoyment. As viewers, we’re constantly on the edge of our seats, not knowing what butterfly-wing-action is going to lead to a character’s slaughter – all with the knowledge that each film ends with one final freakicide more horrific than the rest.

“The kill is always important but it’s about the build-up to the kill. It’s about the misdirection and how much fun you can have playing with the audience,” Reddick says. The butcherings are regularly compared to Rube Goldberg machines – those elaborate cause-and-effect, domino-like contraptions that ultimately perform a very simple task. In the case of Final Destination, that task is murder. Take this kill scene in Final Destination 2 as an example: a fridge magnet falls into a rotating microwave causing a fire in the victim’s apartment, causing the microwave and its contents to explode, causing him to grab onto an escape ladder and jump onto the street below, causing him to slip on a pile of said noodles, before the ladder falls and impales him through the eye. Voila!

Such graphic scenes are impossible to unsee. One of the most memorable (and memeable) is a log truck accident in Final Destination 2 involving a monster pile-up of car and body parts. “I will literally get a log truck meme three times a week. People think I’d be sick of it, but it feeds my soul – as long as nobody dies,” Reddick laughs. Also forever seared into our retinas is the tanning bed death in Final Destination 3, which sees one sun-loving victim get barbecued alive. Far, far more effective than any PSA about UV rays.

This brings us the crux of why Final Destination is so traumatic. If it’s true that we enjoy the fact that horror makes us scared, Final Destination does that in the purest way: it makes us scared of literally everything. “What we tried to do – and it really is awful – is figure out ways that people could die doing the things that most people have to do at some point in their life,” Reddick says.

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Or if we’re flipping that on its head, maybe its psychological scarring reminds us how precious (and precarious) life is. In addition to the actual deaths, the franchise is equally full of near-death experiences; close shaves that give us a shot of adrenaline. “People are always most alive just before they die,” Bludworth philosophises in Final Destination 2. Who needs the adrenaline rush of a real rollercoaster when you can ride an emotional one instead, watching as Wendy in Final Destination 3 narrowly avoids a theme park smash-up?

According to the comments on the film’s trailer on YouTube, it’s an approach that works. “This movie is the sole reason I have overanalysed my environment ever since I was a kid,” reads one. “The nose ring scene is gonna be this generation’s don’t drive behind a logging truck,” says another, referring to the new trailer. A third lists 15 things to avoid (including escalators, funfairs, ovens, and showers) before conceding: “At this point, I’ll just live in a bubble.”

And with the steep rise in freak accidents, I have a premonition that this forthcoming instalment will feel like the most real yet. But what can we expect? As ever, the unexpected. “In horror, unless you see somebody die on screen, they’re not dead. We haven't seen Alex [the main character of the first film] die; we haven't seen Kimberly [the protagonist of the sequel] die. So, I don't know,” Reddick says with a knowing grin. It’s not clear why the franchise is suddenly making a return – but it does seem to be spooky timing.

When Final Destination: Bloodlines hits cinemas, you can bet that Death will come out on top, while the rest of us will try to work out how to get home without opening a door, crossing the road, going down a flight of stairs, hopping in a lift, walking under scaffolding, getting on the bus, having something to drink… breathe. Maybe we’ll wait until it’s streaming, eh?

‘Final Destination: Bloodlines’ will be released into cinemas on 16 May